No cows here. What's next?

Hope and Luna are gone to Nebraska.  I placed an ad on Craigslist Friday, put a very reasonable price on the two of them together, got a call a couple of hours later, and the next day they were gone.  The guy who bought them plans to use them as nurse cows for other calves.  This is the first time I've been totally cow-less since 2009 when we bought Bonnie.  I'm not too downhearted about this; I should have done it three years ago when we started losing every other calf that was born here.  

I am surprised, though, at how suddenly my thoughts have turned to acquiring a dog.  I have been saying ever since Iris found a new home that I don't need or even want a dog.  Suddenly I'm studying dog breeds online!  

This isn't something I'm going to act on immediately; the thought is going to have to simmer a long time on the back burner of my brain.  We are going on a few road trips this year, and a puppy would cause problems with that.  Cora fills a huge spot in my heart that keeps me from needing a house pet right now:  She's loving, she doesn't shed, and she's house-broken.  Who needs a puppy?  

When (and if) the time comes, I want a non-shedding breed, and I want to start with a puppy:  I've had enough problems with rescue dogs and the baggage they come with.  From my research, it appears I had better start saving my money now, because none of the breeds I've looked at are cheap.  

Schnauzers appeal to me, both the miniature and standard types.  A Scottie would probably do.  I once met a Maltese Terrier I really liked.  

All those breeds have to be taken to a groomer regularly, which is an added expense and something to consider.  But when you think of the cost of heart-worm prevention and flea-and-tick prevention, the cost of grooming is only a drop in the bucket.  It's very expensive to keep a dog if you do things the way they are supposed to be done.  We are retired and living on a fixed income, so I'll give this a lot of thought before I actually get a dog.

This may just be one of those ideas of mine that passes without any resolution; I know I won't be doing anything about it soon.  

Time will tell.

Hot dog!

My husband is an easy man to cook for.  There are very few foods he dislikes.  If I'm trying to keep our calories under control (that's most of the time, and should be ALL the time, as much trouble as we both have controlling what we eat) he will eat almost any healthy food I put in front of him.  You can pretty much count on one hand the things he doesn't care to eat:  turnips, yogurt, , whole-wheat bread, oysters and other shell-fish.  That's about it.

However, he has never been a fan of hot dogs.  He doesn't hate them, it's just that he'd rather have other things.  I, on the other hand, love them.  On the rare occasion when Cliff goes somewhere without me for the whole day, I have hot dogs available in the freezer.  There's also a can of oysters in the cupboard, because I love oyster soup.  You can imagine the difficulty I have making a decision, with such lovely choices as those.  

As a side note, here's something I must share related to this tale:  When we first married, Cliff didn't like spicy-hot foods.  "Why would you eat something that hurts your mouth?" he'd say.  Taking it easy with hot stuff wasn't a problem for me, since I wasn't big on peppers and such either, although I didn't feel as strongly about the subject as he did.  Over the years, though, we've both developed a fondness for pepper-hot foods, so that today it's difficult to get anything too hot to suit us, Cliff especially.  Google tells me that the number of taste buds decrease as we age, so perhaps that's the explanation for this phenomenon.  (You should have seen me trying to spell that word.  Had to misspell it three times before spell-check even gave me an option.)

Oscar Meyer has finally come up with a hot dog that my husband will eat, and I believe he would eat them three times weekly if I'd serve them.

Our nearest stores, including the little Walmart in Oak Grove, don't carry this particular delicacy.  Smaller stores couldn't possibly make room for other brands of hot dogs if they tried to stock every kind made by Oscar Meyer (click HERE if you don't believe it).  So far, Blue Springs, twenty miles from here, is the nearest place I've found them.

I don't buy buns.  I boil the hot dogs for ten minutes (because I hate a half-cold hot dog), wrap them in a piece of American cheese, then a slice of Wonder bread, wrap each one in a paper towel to make sure the cheese melts, and I have a masterpiece!  This, by the way, is how I've eaten all hot dogs for years, but Cliff didn't often participate in this particular manna-from-heaven meal with me until I introduced him to the jalepeno dog.

As I said, I could probably get by with serving these for supper three times weekly.  We only have one apiece, so the calories fit right in with our weight-watching (bread 80 calories, hot dog 130, cheese 100), but the nutrition isn't much to brag about.  OK, it's junk food, that's the bitter truth.  White bread, American cheese, ground-up animal by-products.  Could it get any worse?  Probably not.  

Anyway, we're out of these hot dogs right now.  Price Chopper has Oscar Meyer hot dogs on sale.  Looks like a trip to Blue Springs is in order.